Telling the truth (for a change)

The other day I did something rather extraordinary: I told the truth.

But there's nothing extraordinary about that, you're saying. We expect people to tell the truth. We throw about truisms like "honesty is the best policy" and we believe them.

Truth comes easy when it's convenient, when it's favorable, when there are no real consequences to speaking it. But for some of us, truth is not so easy. For some of us, society would much prefer that we lie.

Which I've done, and for many years now. I have lied. Over and over, in situation after situation, time and again. I have lied to shield myself from the consequences of the truth,  but also to shield others who are not ready to hear the truth.

On this particular day, though, my moment had finally -- suddenly, and quite unexpectedly -- arrived. I was visiting a church group on a Sunday morning. The members were holding a formal and very friendly discussion on gay marriage, moderated by the minister. The point of the discussion was the importance of supporting gay couples and speaking truth to power, even when that truth might be personally very uncomfortable for them, or controversial, or risky. And supporting gay rights in Tupelo, Mississippi, is risky.

For the first time in my life, I stood up and addressed a gathering of people and identified myself as a gay man. I mumbled something rather incoherent, I'm afraid. I was trembling a little bit. I don't recall now a word I said. I was simply determined to speak up, consequences be damned. If a church group could challenge themselves on learning to be bold in the face of the endless bigotry directed at gay people, the least I could do was stand up and say that I was a gay person -- the very sort of person they were hoping to defend.

I'll be 50 years old in the not too distant future. I've known that I was gay since I was about 13. That adds up to about 37 years of silence on my part. Silence. Pretending. Lying. Dishonesty. Deceit. A lifetime of hinting, of secrets, of fearful silences, or pretending to be something I was not, or pretending not to be something that I very definitely was. A lifetime of letting gay jokes go by without comment. A lifetime of hiding the truth from others, and very often from myself.

I had reached a point on that recent Sunday morning when I could no longer keep my mouth shut.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous when explained in this fashion. You don't know -- can't know -- the history behind those 37 years of silence, of what happened when people found out I was gay, of the friends who promptly deserted me, of relatives who decided they wanted nothing more to do with me, of promotions that I did not get, of the whispers behind my back, the judgments, the condemnations, the betrayals, the knives in the back.

When I was 13, I looked up the word homosexuality in the dictionary. I was informed that homosexuality was a sexual perversion in the same category as bestiality, necrophilia and pedophilia  I was, in other words, no better than some ghoulish monster who enjoyed having sex with dead horses. Pretty heady stuff for a kid.

I took it seriously. Throw in ample doses of Catholic guilt and shame, and constant reminders that St. Paul said the "effeminate" would not go to heaven (and everyone knew what he meant by that big word), or that "man working with man that is unseemly" quote - you get the picture.

Unseemly. That's what it meant to be a homosexual. Unseemly. Something not discussed in polite company. Something shameful, disgraceful, a moral failure. To be gay was to reject God, to spit on the cross, to refuse salvation, to be like Satan.

And oh, I believed it all. With all my heart and soul.

I have other secrets, though, about which I have rarely, if ever, spoken about.

One of those secrets is the fact that I was sexually abused from the ages of 7 to 10 by a man who lived next door to us, not to mention a Cub Scout master and others.

While I began to ponder what was going with me, the "nature versus nurture" debate was raging. Some people said that being gay was quite natural, but others said that boys became gay because of their environment, or because their father was missing (mine died when I was 10), or because they had been sexually abused, or their mother was too dominant, and so on. Almost everyone said it was a choice. You had to choose to be gay. If you were gay, it was because you had chosen to be gay, and you could just "un-choose" it.

All of this swirled around in my brain during my teenage years. I did not know what to make of any of it. The adults and authority figures in my life said being gay was shameful, sinful, disgraceful. When I told my mother about it, she laughed at me and said I would get over it, and we never spoke about it again. Once in a while I came across a news story or an article in a magazine about how being gay was caused by sexual abuse, or some other such thing. I did not have the tools to sort out the truth of the matter. I was not capable of it. I was caught up in a tornado of conflicting voices and opinions, religious condemnation, verses from the Bible that seemed quite plain and straight forward - I had no idea what to make of it.

There was certainly no one in my life, at that time during the late 1970s and early 1980s, who said being gay was okay. Not one single person. On the contrary. I was met with universal condemnation.

So, like many before me, I learned the art of silence. I learned to keep my mouth shut. To lie, if need be. To pretend. To go with the flow. To not risk the consequences of openly identifying as a homosexual man. I even got married in a desperate attempt to "let go and let God," having being told by a priest friend who was very dear to me that I needed to "trust" God and give him a chance, that no one is really "gay," that I just needed to mature and experience heterosexuality and everything would be all right.

I confess I look back on my life with much bitterness at the years wasted, the years lost, the years spent in agony and dishonesty, in and out of the closet, neurotically obsessed about who might know, and what they might think, or what they might do to me.

I'm not an easy person to get to know. I am naturally secretive, and very rarely talk about my past. I learned to be that way to protect myself, to keep people at a distance. I've succeeded at that, at keeping people at a distance, so much so that I'm now pushing 50 and have very few real friends to speak of. I kept people at a distance because I did not want to be rejected by them. But by doing so, I denied them the chance to know who I really was. I denied them the opportunity to make a decision in the matter for themselves. In the end, I did both them and myself a disservice.

On that recent Sunday morning, all of this came crashing to a stop. I just could not go on with it any more, because I realized -- much too late, alas -- that there was nothing wrong with me. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm not a pervert. I'm not morally disordered. I'm not the same as someone who wants to have sex with a golden retriever or a parakeet.

I made two serious mistakes:

I allowed other people to define me. Those people defined me according to their religious beliefs and their own prejudice and bigotry. True enough, many of them thought they were helping me, or were trying to "save" me and prevent the loss of my soul. Even so, they acted from bigotry and ignorance, and I allowed them to tell me who I was, rather than insisting on my own truth, on what I knew to be true. I used silence to protect both myself and others. I used silence and deception to escape the consequences of being a gay man. I also used silence so as not to embarrass some of those near and dear to me. Their love and regard was more important to me than insisting on the truth about myself. I did this to protect the woman I married, and the child we had. I did this to protect some friends who were not comfortable having their ignorance exposed, their bigotry challenged. I did this with co-workers so that we could get along peacefully without their having to deal with the "problem" of having a gay man in the office. I did this so that neighbors wouldn't worry about getting AIDS if we sat down and had a cup of coffee. I did this with publishers who might think twice about publishing a book by an openly gay man for fear that it wouldn't sell. (After all, how many gay men write murder mysteries?) I willingly and knowingly sacrificed the truth about myself so as not to upset the apple cart. 

Another "first" is right around the corner. This coming Monday, I will attend my first gay rights rally. For the first time in my life, I will attend a public event and openly identify myself as a gay man. 
I confess to being unsure about this, perhaps a little scared. I've been told by some people close to me not to go. Will my family be embarrassed by me? Will co-workers drive by and see me? 
Part of me -- most of me, in fact -- does not care. I have started down a path and there is no turning back now. Why? The answer is simple: I tried silence. I tried hiding, and pretending. I wound up isolated and alone, apologizing for something for which no apology is necessary. It's time for me to move on and try something more authentic, more honest, more real -- consequences be damned. 
I have never carried a flag, and never will. I will probably always be very private. But I've decided that I'm not going to be dishonest anymore. If would-be readers don't want to read a murder mystery written by a gay man, I will have to accept that. If a would-be employer doesn't want a gay man on his or her team, I will have to accept that too. If there are people in my life who can't cope with the thought that not everyone on earth is heterosexual, then they will have to let me go. 
I'm coming out, in other words. 
I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it. 
It's my turn, to quote gay icon Diana Ross. 
Life will surely go on. 


All of which begs the question: Who am I, really?
Mostly I'm a writer. Under the name Nick Wilgus, I write murder mysteries featuring a Buddhist monk. You can find more information on my website. In addition to my Father Ananda novels, I also wrote the movie based on my first book, Mindfulness and Murder . You can see a clip of that. The movie was nominated for a best screenplay award by the Thai Film Association. 
The Father Ananda books include Mindfulness and Murder, Sister Suicide, Killer Karma and the forthcoming The Monk Who Was Defeated. 
I also write novels under the name Sulayman X, my alter ego. The first of these was Bilal's Bread about a Muslim boy coming to terms with his sexuality in a harsh, religious environment. It was nominated for a Lambda Award. I also wrote Adventures of a Bird-Shit Foreigner, The Queer Who Loved Allah, One Night in Bangkok: The Short Stories, Tears of a Dragon, and my most recent, King of Storms . These last two are fantasy genre novels for young LGBT readers.
My next book as Sulayman X will be Way of the Cross: A Thomas Noel Mystery, due from DreamSpinner Press in July this year. This is a new murder mystery series featuring an openly gay homicide detective. 
I am a very spiritual man. I converted to Catholicism as a teenager. I spent time in a monastery. I have  spent many years studying other religions, including Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. I have read deeply of writers such as Krishnamurti, Inayat Khan, Rumi, Osho, Swami Prabhupada, Merton, Kung, Gandhi. I studied many flavors of Buddhism, including Tibetan Buddhism and Zen. I become a Muslim at one point. I also spent a lot of time with the Hare Krishnas. I've flirted with atheism and nihilism. 
I've been married. I'm a proud father of a child who is now in college and doing very well.
I lived in Bangkok, Thailand for many years working as a journalist at the Bangkok Post. 
I have worked most every day of my life. I was the first in my family to ever go to college, and the first (and still the only) to obtain a college degree.
When it comes to religion, it's a rare bigot that can hold a candle to me. Despite all the years of seeking advice and help from priests and gurus, I rarely met even one with a sensible thing to say about homosexuality. They repeated the same tired cliches full of bigotry and ignorance and misinformation. Even gay priests told me there was no alternative but to accept the teachings of the Catholic Church (if you can imagine such a ridiculous thing). How can I accept their judgment of me, that I'm "morally compromised," when they clearly have no idea what they're talking about? 
I say all this, not to be proud of myself, but to point out the obvious: There's nothing wrong with me. I've been very successful in all my undertakings. I'm scrappy. I'm smart. I've survived. I've written books and a movie. I've worked a variety of jobs and positions. I lived overseas for almost 20 years. Somehow, despite the odds, I have survived. 
Seems to me that I've reached a fork in the road, that my life is about to take an entirely new direction, one of honesty, one of full self-disclosure. Strange that it should happen in a place like Tupelo, Mississippi, a most inconvenient place to be gay. But perhaps it's the very outrageousness of a place like Tupelo that calls for an equally outrageous reaction. 
Like so many others before me, I might be pleasantly surprised at where this road leads. I will surely rack up a few casualties, but never mind. Wherever this road leads, it can't be worse than where I've been.